Running XFCE on the N800

Internet Tablet Talk forum member Penguinbait has done it again, this time …

Earlier this week, an intrepid Internet Tablet Talk forum member with the handle "Penguinbait" managed to get KDE running on the Nokia N800 web tablet. Yesterday, Penguinbait followed up with instructions for installing XFCE and then offered a script to automate the process.

XFCE is a very lightweight environment, and should perform better on the N800 than KDE, but it's also not really designed for optimal touchscreen interaction. The relative ease with which XFCE can be installed on an SD card using a simple script is significant. Penguinbait is clearly refining the process and finding ways to make it more accessible to regular users. In time, we may see more elaborate tools for generating custom environments for the N800. This could also make it easier for KDE and XFCE developers to experiment with interface improvements that relate to touchscreen interaction.

In the discussion thread for the journal post about the N800 KDE port, Ars reader Seablade informed us that Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler ported the Enlightenment e17 environment to the N800 in June. Haitzler has previously ported the lightweight e17 environment to the PS3 in collaboration with Linux distributor Terra Soft. When we interviewed Haitzler last year, he explained that "e17 shines in raw efficiency" and "can do all its fancy graphics without Open GL, without Compiz, without Xgl, without massively fast CPU's and tons of video RAM and high-end graphics chips."

Like XFCE, e17 doesn't really provide an interface that is designed for touchscreens, but several of e17's underlying technologies—EFL and Edje—are a very potent combination for touchscreen application development. In June, developers created several really impressive N800 prototype applications, including a proof-of-concept application launcherdemo and an iPhone keyboard clone, using Python and Edje.